> and michael, forgive me if i'm wrong, but isn't tor more oriented toward > obscuring activity than any of the above services? all i remember about > tor from the brief period i had used it was that it bogged down the > internet speed abysmally. > > - nathan
The whole point of Tor is to allow people to use the Net without being traceable to their point of origin. By default, openDns blocks accessing sites about Tor and other web anonymizers as filtering and anonymizing tend to be counter productive activities. In order to effectively filter via openDns, your source has to be identified. For users of Tor, the source isn't identifiable. That is the point of Tor if it actually works. The number one customer for openDns I would say is the concerned parent or business. The number one customer for Tor, the "Adult" entertainment industry. This is not to say that Tor doesn't have legitimate uses such as covering the identity of human rights workers and concealing the identity of people in China trying to get past state censors who arguably aren't always right. I frankly question whether Tor should be allowed without any back doors and without the volunteer anonymizing relays behind it taking at least some responsibility for the content going through their relays. Granted, their is an argument for not having a back door. Thing is, the bad guys will use Tor. So what if bot nets are a better way to get your message or SPAM out anonymously? The major concern with Tor and other anonymizers is that people who are nuisances on the Net and people who are addicted to certain things on the net will probably be the first, not the last people to use it. OpenDns is one of the few services I know about where the person addicted to XYZ on the Net can have it filtered out without losing much. Dansguardian and ProCon Latte are poor alternatives that block too much legitimate activity and they are fairly trivial to bypass. I brought up Tor as a possible con to using openDns in some situations as Tor effectively defeats openDns. Tor will defeat any third party filter like openDns. Tor is something I want to research from the ethics standpoint as the issues concerning Tor are not black and white, there is a lot of controversy. The use of geolocation by some communities for example to implement standards for web content is easily defeated by Tor. People argue that the purpose of Tor is to protect free speech, but I am cynical about protecting anonymous free speech and offering people anonymous web surfing. What about the right not to listen to or read something coming to you over the Net? SPAM is a common abuse of that right. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
